When Hokusai called himself Sharaku he was already very inventive.
His pictures look like being made of arcs drawn with prepared circular stencils.
I have shown the examples of okubi-e (portrait of the half of the body).
This time I show that more complcated picture ( two portraits of the half of the body) has new compositional device.
I picked [Sawamura Yodogorou and Bandou Zenji] because of its high resolution.
Firstly I made the circle-arc model then enlarged the detail of the right person's head.
We can see easily that the curling hairs are drawn one by one.
It is obvious that the painter used some device like stencil or circular rulers.
I colored each circle-arc in six colores: yellowish green, red, blue, green, bluish green and orange.
In the detail the blue colored circle-arcs are distinktively used: not only the contour of the head, but also the ridge of nose, the cheek, the right shoulder and the collars.
These circle-arcs are used as the main motifs to
construct the whole picture.
Now let me show the whole model.
It is obvious that each motif is used as a group at specific part.
The yellow green circle-arc is used to express drooping long hairs, the hanging sleeves and the left person's loose collars.
The curled hair tips in red are the same as the left person's long sideburns and the round parts of collar.
The right person's belt is also made of this circle-arcs.
The round blue circle-arcs are more expressive in the head of the left person; the head cap, the outline of the shaven hair, the whiskers , the cheek and the chin.
In this way the whole network is organised according to the degree of curvature.
This technique was used more obviously in [osiokurihatoutusennozu], which I explained in the previous blog.
The four circl-arcs which construct the boat in the lower center are the main motifs to express various waves.
Each circle-arc functions as a group at various spots.
A portrait and a landscape are comparable, not on symbolic level but on technical level.
As a double portrait this picture needed new device to harmonize the two motifs.
[Nakutenanakuse tomegane] which I introduced last time is also a double portrait.
As I used only the detail I show the whole image to explain another device.
We can see the trace of stencil on top left side of the margin.
It looks that each rib of the umbrella is made of two identical curves.
I extended each arc to find the whole circle.
This circle turned out to be the same as the outline of the opened umbrella.
The arm lines also look like having the same curvature.
So I tried to draw all the slightly curved lines as the part of the circle.
Surprisingly many lines can be drawn as the part of the circle.
The circle is the largest in the model of the picture.
The rest of circle-arcs, being smaller, are easier to recognise the curvature.
I call this composition the largest circle-base method.
One way of seeing a line is moving the eyes along the line, then seeing the lines with the same curvature must give the viewer a sort of sense of unity.
People in general see an image as sign as the result of education.
They lose the natural ability of seeing the shape as it is.
This is why only the early style of Sharaku's works are valued.
His fame is as the great portrait artist as people see the surface meaning.
Wikipedia writes that Sharaku's later styles are "artistically inferior".
This type of neglect by the authority reminds me of the cases of Cezanne's bathers and Klee's later drawings which I will reevaluate later with the aid of analytic method.
The later styles of Sharaku seem to be great experiments after the study of early ukiyo-e, which is another undervalued style.
